New super-microscope at the University of Copenhagen

Friday, 27 January 2017

The Novo Nordisk Foundation grant will give researchers new opportunities to study the structure of proteins in detail. Researchers all over Denmark will have access to the new equipment.

The Novo Nordisk Foundation has awarded a grant of DKK 60 million to the University of Copenhagen for a new research programme that will help to develop new understanding of the three-dimensional construction of proteins.

The grant will bring world-leading research and technology to Greater Copenhagen, including an advanced cryoelectron microscope for analysing the structure of proteins. The microscope that will be physically located at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences of the University of Copenhagen. All researchers at the University will have access to the microscope. Researchers and other employees in industry all over Denmark will also have access to the new equipment.

The grant will give researchers new opportunities to study the structure of proteins in detail, thereby enabling them to better understand and map their function and interaction with other proteins and molecules, including drugs.

In addition to purchasing the microscope, the Foundation’s grant will help to establish a new research group within structural biology that will base its research on the new technology. The group will be led by Guillermo Montoya from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research at the University of Copenhagen.

“Establishing a research group and purchasing this advanced equipment represent a quantum leap in our studies of the protein and DNA complexes that are involved in various aspects of gene modification and genomic instability. This grant is absolutely vital and will make us even more competitive at the global level,” says Guillermo Montoya.

“I am delighted by the Foundation’s generous donation to our research infrastructure. Establishing the cryoelectron microscope facility strengthens our already acknowledged position within protein research. I am confident that the microscope will help us reach new milestones in this field of expertise,” says Ulla Wewer, Dean of the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen.